Identity
by Abicion
Summary: I totally didn't steal any of this from a Ray Liotta movie. I'm serious, you guys.


Being in DOATEC's research wing conjured familiar memories Kasumi wished weren't familiar. The other shinobi who had joined the raid were spread throughout the complex. Ayane and Hayabusa were on the helipad above, preventing any chance of Donovan's security calling for backup. Her brother Hayate was somewhere within the facility's winding corridors, securing the escape route. It was up to her to reach the laboratory deep in the building's interior and stop her enemies from unleashing their monster on the world.

"Alpha" was what they had called their creation. Cloned from an unwitting test subject and grown to Kasumi's own age at a rapid rate, her mere existence was a travesty against nature.

Everything was just as Kasumi recalled from her hazy, sedative-riddled memories. The room housed a gallery of DOATEC's testing apparatuses; large transparent glass cylinders filled with ominous green fluid. Surrounding the columns was an entanglement of industrial-grade equipment with a purpose she still hadn't discerned and didn't care to guess. The only thing remotely natural about the whole place was the circle of golden sunlight pouring through a portal on one wall, and even that was partially blocked by a spinning ventilation fan.

One devices stood out from the rest. While the aquatic environments of all the other capsules were open for observation, this one had been covered in a series of magnetic clamps and was likely being prepared for transport. Realizing she had found her target, Kasumi approached the cylinder and tinkered with the console into its base. In a matter of seconds, the sequence of locks keeping the containment field in place began to split open. The metallic shell slowly peeled away from the glass enclosure to reveal...

... the cylinder was empty.

"Hey sis."

Kasumi spun around in horror when she heard her own voice speaking out of a dark corner of the room. Alpha daintily stepped out of her hiding place with a playful look on her face, dressed a dark pink bodysuit that was designed for stealth missions and contrasted with Kasumi's more elegant white and pink ninja robe. While the original Kasumi left hair hanging freely down her back, this incarnation braided her hair in a thick ponytail.

"Long time no see. You don't look so bad when you're not covered in that slimy stuff."

Kasumi was repulsed by how trivial her doppelganger made the whole ordeal sound. Throughout the cloning process, she lost track of how long she had been submerged in one of the glass cylinders in this very room, preserved in the strange liquid and constantly lingering on the border of consciousness as she and her synthetic twin were studied like lab animals. It was a miracle she had been able to escape before they did anything worse to her.

And the whole time she been a captive, floating in her warm, watery prison with every inch of her body on display, she had seen Alpha's thoughts. Whether it was somehow part of the experiment, or (more likely) just another facet of Alpha's freakish nature, that was the most chilling thing about Kasumi's experience. Kept side by side in identical capsules, Alpha and she had shared everything just like two good sisters should, but what Alpha had telepathically shown her during their routine examinations could have driven Kasumi to insanity in itself. With the cold intellect of a criminal genius and the bubbling personality of a young girl, Alpha chattered incessantly about how she wanted to watch the world burn only after reducing Hayate to her personal play toy. She was always looking forward how much disaster she would bring the moment the scientists finished their tests and deemed her worthy for the battlefield, and she became disturbingly impatient when Kasumi tried to isolate herself from the conversation and close off her own thoughts. DOATEC had succeeded in engineering the perfect killing machine, but they were going to quickly discover they had no way to control it. Not even Donovan himself could have realized Alpha's full intentions.

That was what had brought Kasumi back. That was how she knew she had to be the one to put an end to this. She crouched into a fighting stance, and Alpha read her actions with her usual tact.

"Hey, I know that face. You still want to keep Hayate for yourself."

Her mouth twisted into a bitter frown as she placed a hand on her hip.

"Greedy little skank."

Kasumi wanted to protect her older brother more than anything, but his life was only a tiny part of everything that was at risk. She clenched her teeth in anger as she raised her voice.

"This has nothing to do with him. I have to stop you before you hurt anyone!"

Alpha sighed and rolled her eyes at her rival's devotion.

"Still convinced you're some great heroine, huh? I thought being part of Donovan's peep show for so long would have taught you some manners."

She leaned with one arm against the nearest test tube.

"I was looking forward to us spending some more time together, but I guess there's no point in going back in these things if you're going to be so snobby about it."

She narrowed her eyes as her words took on a rebellious tone.

"I'll just have to prove I'm the better one."

She pulled a dagger from the back of her belt to mark the beginning of the fight.

Alpha lunged forward and slashed at her opponent. Kasumi parried the attack, tangled her arm around Alpha's, and ripped the weapon from her hand. In unarmed combat, the two girls traded punch for punch, kick for kick, and matched each other in extraordinary agility. Finally, it seemed Kasumi had reached the higher ground when she forced Alpha's back against one of the cylinders and pinned her in place. She made a swift chopping motion for her opponent's neck, hoping to at least end her life mercifully. Alpha crossed her wrists and blocked the finishing blow, however, and the two fighters began pushing toward each other and struggling to break the deadlock.

Kasumi never anticipated what her clone would do next.

With the speed of a lightning flash, Alpha withdrew one hand, reached around her sibling's waist for the dagger on her back, and slammed the blade through the sash of Kasumi's dress and straight into her gut. Kasumi's eyes went wide as she instantly gave up her resistance and stumbled backward. Alpha giggled and offered a few taunting words.

"Oh, it looks like your knife wound up in the wrong place. Let me fix that for ya."

Alpha kept a solid underhanded grip around the hilt of the dagger. With a sadistic twist of her wrist, she turned the thin stream of blood trickling from Kasumi's side into a crimson waterfall. She finally removed the weapon from its owner's flesh when she felt a suitable amount of damage had been done. Kasumi only groaned in pain for a few short moments before collapsing face-first to the lab floor. Her rival casually sent the weapon clattering across the ground.

"You always were dead weight."

Silence filled the room. After taking a moment to shift her eyes and visually size up her fallen adversary, a mischievous smirk crossed Alpha's lips. She loosened the scarf around her neck and eagerly began shrugging her shoulders out of her combat attire.

The more revealing ninja robe turned out to be very comfortable, but that didn't come as much of a surprise. It had been sewn with her exact measurements in mind. When she finished tugging the white stockings up to her thighs and tightening the cherry blossom-colored sash around her waist, she ripped the ribbon out of her ponytail and tossed it in the direction of her opponent. She shook her head and brushed her hands through her hair to send the long brown locks shimmering down her back.

Everything was perfect, except for one slight problem. Her new costume had been slashed across the midsection and displayed a rather prominent bloodstain, but the fact the exposed skin underneath had been untouched was rather telling. To eliminate this discrepancy, Kasumi removed the dagger from of her sash, bit her lip, and inflicted a shallow wound on herself by tracing the shape of the cut in her dress. It was enough to leave a nasty battle scar a few inches away from her navel, but it was worth it. After all, it was just another way of showing how far she would go for her brother's acceptance. She carefully guided the weapon back to the scabbard on the small of her back when she was finished.

Kasumi heard footsteps approaching the lab's entrance, causing her to cup her palm over the cut and begin walking toward the noise with an exaggerated limp. It wasn't long before her dear, sweet older brother appeared in the doorway.

"Hayate!"

Her face glowed with delight, and she couldn't stop herself from diving forward to hug him. He initially seemed shocked by her outburst, but she didn't let it bother her. She was going to take good care of him now, and she would always be there for him, and she would never run away from him, not like the other one. She felt dirty when she remembered whose clothes she was wearing.

Hayate's look of surprise changed to concern when he saw his sister was wounded. Although the bleeding had slowed to the point of almost stopping, the stain on her dress made it clear she had already lost a great deal.

"Kasumi, you're hurt."

Kasumi placed her hand back over the cut and winced sharply. She proceeded to present herself as the fearless warrior who refused to surrender no matter how grievous the injury. He was sure to care about her once he saw how strong she had become.

"It's nothing major. I'll be okay..."

She allowed her voice to go weak and pretended to stagger into his arms, just drive the point home. Her eyes closed when he leaned forward to support her light frame. She almost wanted to reveal the full extent of her feelings right then and there, but she held herself back. Her entire ploy could be ruined if she took things too far.

Hayate was beginning to understand. His sister's close brush with death must have worn down her brave demeanor and made her more affectionate than usual. It was probably all she had left after all the stress she had been through. His thoughts moved to the next matter at hand as Kasumi regained her strength.

"Is Alpha... ?"

Kasumi turned her head as his words trailed off. Hayate curiously followed her line of vision, where he noticed a second figure sprawled out across the grated floor. Mostly obscured by the shadows of bizarre research equipment, the young woman was identical Kasumi in every detail except for the stealth gear that shrouded her corpse. A pool of blood had become her final resting place, and a dagger that resembled the one Kasumi always wore was laying just beside her icy hand.

"She's dead. She can't try to split us apart any more."

She wasn't lying, if you considered the person she was actually referring to.

Kasumi hung her head in regret and shivered lightly. It was all to help the act along, of course. When she slowly raised her eyes, she saw her brother had fallen for her wiles and was offering a comforting smile.

"Let's go home, Kasumi."

So we can destroy the Mugen Tenshin from the inside out together, thought Kasumi. She responded with only a relieved grin and a cheerful nod before he lifted her off the ground.

Hayate's party believed they had finally defeated DOATEC and ended all of the diabolical works of Victor Donovan that day. However, as Kasumi was rushed out of the complex in her brother's arms, she knew the real battle was only just beginning.


End file.
